Caged Bird
by Wildcard
Summary: Boo Radley got locked away for something much worse than just being drunk in public, but nobody's left who knows what it was. Except Boo. One-shot, Boo-centric, contains SLASH. Be warned! No flames accepted.


Caged Bird.

_the caged bird sings with a fearful trill  
of things unknown and longed for still  
and his tune is heard on the distant hill  
for the caged bird sings of freedom - Maya Angelou_

Everyone says that Boo Radley got locked up for being drunk and disorderly. They say that his and his friends got falling-over drunk and locked the beadle in the courthouse and threw away the keys. They say he stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors. They say he's crazy.

They're right about all of the above, but they're not saying _everything_.

They don't know everything; Mr. Radley made sure of that.

Mr. Radley's name and Mr. Radley's money kept the worst of the sordid tale from ever being repeated in Maycomb County. What else was a father to do when he was called into court to settle the matter of his son being publicly drunk only to have the judge take him aside into a public room and explain that well, the drunk part wasn't the part that Mr. Radley needed to truly _worry_ about?

Mr. Radley hadn't understood. He'd asked impatiently what the judge was talking about. The judge hadn't wanted to answer; he'd glanced at the beadle instead, passing the question over. The beadle was the one who'd been there, after all. He was the eye-witness.

The beadle had coughed, and cleared his throat. Haltingly, he'd explained how he'd been attracted there by the noise, and found the older Cunningham boys chugging down a gallon jug of whiskey. They were also in a borrowed flivver, piled up and yelling, 'cepting Arthur Radley and Willian Cunningham, who were necking like they'd just invented it. And when he tried to pull them apart and charge them for breaking the law and crimes against nature, they'd locked him up and laughed, and kissed again for 'luck', like they'd called it.

Mr. Radley had gone white at that, and his hand had tightened on the cane. "Judge," he'd said carefully, and his voice had been firm, "If you will release Arthur into my care, I will assure you nothing like that will ever happen again."

The judge had agreed because putting a boy like Arthur Radley into an industrial school or a jail, where there'll just be more boys for him to corrupt, didn't sound like any kind of good idea to him.

So Arthur Radley went home. He went home, and stayed home, and was kept safely away from anyone he could contaminate.

William Cunningham called once, when his sentence was done and he'd grown into a strapping young man, but wasn't allowed past the front porch with Boo locked safely away from him in the basement. Mr. Radley told him not to ever come again, and that he'd be arrested for trespassing if he stepped foot on the Radley grounds again. That was the night that Boo stabbed his father in the thigh; it was the last time he ever heard from Will.

Mr. Radley died and Boo's brother, Nathan came down. The two could hardly even tolerate being in the same room together, and Boo's introversion slid into wistfulness, the early-old man looking out of the window at the world that had shut him out. He watched Scout, Dill and Jem grow up. He gave them gifts, brought them blankets and saved their lives. They saw Maycomb County's cruelty to those who were different, 'specially those who had a difference that could be seen instantly instead of hidden like Boo's could. They saw it, they hated it, and Boo felt like maybe he was a little less alone.

He'd saved them. If they went and changed the world, just like their Daddy tried to, then Boo had done something too, and all his years of exile wouldn't count for nothing compared to that.

And maybe the world would become the kind of place he could walk about freely once more.

**Author's Note:** Review, please? I figured that Boo needs a little love, and considering how they reacted to black people back then, I'm guessing they weren't too tolerant of gays either.

FF_


End file.
